- Amid the cardboard boxes, computer equipment and documents cluttering the
second-floor back bedroom in the only red-and-white house on Cuyahoga St. in
Kent is the headquarters of the Coalition Against Testing.

Leader of this band of 300 anti-E-check Ohioans and owner of the house is
Keith Eckmeyer, a 44-year-old retiree.

It all began in 1995, he says, after he borrowed a friend's phone and called
the E-check office. He says he asked 10 questions about the program, wrote down
the answers, handed the phone to his friend and asked him to do the same thing.
He claims none of the answers matched.

Thus began Eckmeyer's six-year battle with legislators, state agencies and
others over a vehicle-emissions testing program that some say doesn't do much
for cleaner air. His nonprofit organization filed a class-action lawsuit in
Summit County challenging the program's legality, and members have bombarded
lawmakers and bureaucrats with letters and calls.

The fanatical, in-your-face activist recently was asked to leave an E-check
committee meeting in Columbus after he argued with an official who, according to
Eckmeyer, didn't know how many counties were in the program.

It's all part of his total dedication to getting rid of a program he
considers a waste of money. "First of all, anybody who can prove to me that
any form of emissions testing on automobiles has done anything to maintain air
quality, I want to see it," he said.

Eckmeyer has volumes of court records, property records, testing records,
environmental studies, correspondence with government officials and bureaucrats,
petitions and other E-check paraphernalia. "You ought to see my
basement," he says, climbing the stairs to the hot, un-air-conditioned
bedroom.

CAT also has a Web site: http:%%cat%%catoh%%endcat%%io.5u.com. Somewhat
militant comments are peppered throughout reproductions of government documents
or published comments by various officials.

But Eckmeyer understands why government officials jumped on the E-check
train: They believed they were doing the right thing after the feds dangled the
threat of losing federal dollars.

"Think of this," he said. "Let's say they did cut off $524
[million] to $525 million to [Cuyahoga], Lake, Lorain, Geauga, Portage, Summit
and Medina. What would we be doing right now to fix our roads for the last five
years? You wouldn't see any orange barrels, but you'd have holes 15 feet in
diameter we'd have to be running through."